In a recent interview, Matty Taylor, the former head of growth at the Solana Foundation and co-founder of Colosseum, made a bold prediction: Solana is primed to outpace Ethereum in terms of consumer applications.

"Solana will continue, as shown over the last year, to outpace Ethereum in terms of getting consumer applications and end-user experiences to the level of Web3 in terms of utilizing the chain’s performance to create fast and user-friendly applications," Taylor stated confidently.

Despite Ethereum currently boasting 1,668 decentralized applications (DApps) compared to Solana's 477, according to data from Alchemy, Taylor remains bullish on Solana's trajectory. He emphasized Solana's superior transaction throughput and faster transaction finality, which have led some to label it as an "Ethereum-killer."

Taylor pointed to a crucial moment for the Solana ecosystem during the downfall of FTX and the subsequent bear market. Despite the market downturn, Solana continued to attract more developers, proving its resilience. "Solana as a network had gone through an important crucible moment that most L1 ecosystems had gone through," Taylor explained, likening it to pivotal events in other blockchain networks' histories.

Ethereum/Solana TVL Chart. (Source: DefiLlama)

However, Ethereum still maintains dominance in terms of total value locked (TVL), with $49.7 billion compared to Solana's $4.01 billion, according to DefiLlama data. Taylor acknowledged this but remained optimistic about Solana's growth potential.

The Solana blockchain did face a significant outage on Feb. 6, with block production halting for over five hours before validators restarted the network. This outage, along with several others since January 2022, raised concerns about Solana's stability. Taylor, however, sees these incidents as part of the growing pains of a blockchain pushing the limits of scalability.

"I’m glad that’s happening now, rather than when the world’s pension funds are on blockchain," Taylor remarked, highlighting the importance of addressing these issues early on.

Despite the challenges, Taylor's confidence in Solana's ability to surpass Ethereum in consumer applications remains unwavering, setting the stage for an intriguing competition between the two prominent blockchain networks.